France Invests €200,000 to Enhance Nigeria’s Women Agricultural Skills

France has invested €200,000 towards enhancing the rural women’s skills in producing higher value-added agricultural products and in leading their agri-food enterprise in Nigeria.

A statement by French Embassy in Nigeria said the SEFAN/SWEAN project funded by the French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs with €200,000 through the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), with the objective to enhance the rural women’s skills in producing higher value-added agricultural products and in leading their agri-food enterprise, is aimed at creating value, revenue, jobs and growth which will attract more youth to the agricultural sector, giving them not only modern technical skills, but also pride and enthusiasm in being a farmer, as there is no more beautiful career than contributing to properly feeding people.

The statement read in part that since the project’s launching on the 1st September 2020, a lot has been achieved, which include the training of 300 women from Oyo and Kaduna states in agribusiness.

The statement further said the women have already built a greater autonomy, self-empowerment and started to strengthen their networks; with the training manual, available in the three major Nigerian languages (Yourba, Hausa & Igbo) will increase local assimilation of the content, and there is plan for 50 more selected women to be trained in becoming trainers themselves and are expected to pass on their knowledge to more than 1000 beneficiaries.

The statement revealed that: “The next step from this meeting is a collaboration with the French network of Technical Education in Agriculture to modernize the curricula of the agricultural technical institutions in Oyo and Kaduna, then spread the modules to other states and at the country level, by promoting their integration into the Agriculture Technical Vocational Education and Training (ATVET) schools and centers.”

The statement issued on Wednesday said “that was the aim of the last two-day brainstorming event at the French Embassy in Abuja, during which the team came up with ideas to better integrate a modern technical education in agriculture.”
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The statement said the French Ambassador to Nigeria, Mrs Emmanuelle Blatmann welcomed at her Residence, the participants to the two-day roundtable dedicated to the remarkable project SEFAN/SWEAN which supports rural agripreneur women.

Michael Olugbode in Abuja

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